best part of the day: escape to paradise

I had been SO looking forward to heading back to Tenerife for the majority of December that I wondered how it could possibly live up to the anticipation. It’s not like I was escaping a terrible job or short of free time back in Edinburgh; more I was just seasonally adjusted by the dull grey weather and wildlife shut-down that happens in Scotland from late October. There is the occasional brighter day but Winter mostly means crappy weather, suboptimal for running and photography, my preferred activities. Tenerife translates as back to t-shirts and shorts and a continual parade of animals and landscapes to point the camera at. And I seem to run faster in the warm weather. This year instead of the usual fortnight we decided to try 3 weeks. (Mary baulked at more as she has work commitments.)
Strangely, resisting my own self-jinxing hype, it lived up to the expectation that it would be magnificent.

Apart from extending the duration of the trip, the theme was bootcamp. That we should up our running workload and augment it with swimming and maybe use the hotel gym and lift some weights. This last part was a vision too far and we failed the dumbbell test. In order to remain faithful to the idea of a holiday (and not just a sweat-fest) we decided to offset the exercise with quite a lot of eating and drinking. Mary normally lives a nearly teetotal, mostly vegan lifestyle, while on holiday she parties like a viking. So the theme became Run Hard, Party Hard. We have put at least one activity on strava every day. And there was maybe one day we didn’t have booze with dinner. Mostly we have stuck to the plan.

Mary at the track checking for butterflies

We stayed at the same hotel as we have the last 4 or 5 visits. Not because it is lovely; it is very basic. However it is along the road from a dirt running track that is surrounded by waste ground and flowering shrubs that draw many of the islands butterfly and dragonfly species. Overhead, kestrels hover looking for snacks. The bus station is across the road and the supermercado is opposite the bus station. (We do self-catering and cook more often than eat out.) We know our way about this end of town and although there are a few favourite places where we find butterflies, bugs and birds, the wildlife menu and venues seem to change each visit, which keeps us on our toes.

This year I came across 2 new species of lizard (wasn’t even looking for them), one Tenerife butterfly first ever sighting, and one first ever daytime hawk-moth sighting (twice.) Some species previously abundant (Canarian red admirals, hoopoes) have been thin on the ground, while others (clouded yellows) have been seen more regularly. And we have found a couple of new spots to search out butterflies. The extra week meant we could be more relaxed about not racing to cram everything into a condensed diary. And a couple of planned trips, revisiting Loro Parque and Mount Limon, never got past the planning stage. We were perhaps more focussed on running and relaxing. It worked out well.

Monarch - largest of the local butterflies

standard Gallotia lizard

likely a female epaulet skimmer

red darter female I think,

if you know better, do get in touch!

Mary at the track in butterflying mode, not running

well worn painted lady

female red darter

looking West

Some of our favourite waste ground for animal safaris were slightly less productive this time. First visit West along the excellent Rambla de Castro and there was too much wind; everything had decided to stay indoors. I think our answer was to hit a nearby cafe and sample its beers and snacks. We did more cafes this trip than in the past and got far too familiar with the indulgence of lunchtime beers, which help greatly with afternoon flow.

small draft beer/lager = canya

larger draft beer/lager = jarra (pronounced harra)

atlantic canary

mostly not quite as yellow as this one, with very pretty sing song tunes

west end of Puerto de la Cruz

coming back down the steep far end of town next to banana plantations

Edinburgh is considered to be a hilly town. However it is flat compared to Tenerife. The island feels recently volcanic and has big jaggy cliffs (riscos) and ravines (barrancos) inconveniently all over the place. The roads climb up hills at ridiculous gradients, or where a direct line is not possible, they ascend in a series of switchbacks. To walk directly inland from our hotel to the “old town” of La Orotava is a three mile hike with over 1500 feet of ascent. We have never tried to rent bikes or hire a car for this reason. There is a fast autopista round the edge of the island but once off that you are on mainly small roads that have giddy gradients. I imagine nobody here has an iffy handbrake.

Instead we get the excellent Titsa bus service around the island. First thing we did was check our bus cards which we put money into each trip. A 30 minute ride costs a couple of euros and a machine at the station says how much you have left on your card. It makes a stress-free commute to wherever, and the buses are regular and mostly pain free. I say mostly because they started an pro-environmental scheme over a year ago where locals travel on buses free (to discourage car use) and it got way more uptake than they were expecting. Consequently some buses are over-subscribed and some services struggle to meet demand.

male epaulet skimmer

monarch

white

a small white (m) courts a resting African migrant (f) which ignores its advances

african migrant, likely female

the males zip around in a frenzy, looking for females

I was surprised and chuffed to come across this little guy at the track: a Tenerife skink. (Or Western Canaries skink.) Never seen one before. I had not long finished reading something about there being four lizards here. Largely similar. This one was very different to the Gallotia lizard we always see (and hear rummaging about the dead leaves) and it moved much more like a snake than a lizard; with a sinuous slither rather than lifting itself up on strong legs. It lets its legs almost flop to its side and seemed to power across the ground as a newt swims through water. Slightly smaller than all but the youngest of the Gallotia lizards, it nevertheless didn’t lose out in the race for the birdseeds I was throwing on the lizard mound beside the sports track. Very popular that, with the local reptiles! Some would scurry right up to where I was and look directly at me.

emperor dragonfly (possibly female)

I took loads of rubbish pics to get this one in focus!

It was just delightful to be back in this vibrant, warm part of the world again. Second or third time at the track butterflying, and I was watching an emperor dragonfly patrol overhead while a monarch and clouded yellow bobbed about over the lizards and small blue jobs. (African grass blues and long-tailed blues.) The place was alive with wildlife if you could stand the heat beating down. (We had to do running stuff early in the day otherwise it would get far too hot and you’d start gasping and drop dead of heatstroke.) After a couple of days of applying sunscreen to upper surfaces I found I could do without it, unless it was going to be a full day’s exposure.

Now the dragonfly above looks like a female emperor although I don’t see them regularly enough in Scotland to know the difference, and the ones here, like the kestrels, seem just a little different to the Scottish jobs. Or maybe the light is the difference. I spent a long time studying the BDS website emperor page after I took the photo at the very top of the page. The upper body is emperor-like but the rest below the thorax is not the bright blue and black of a male emperor. I checked lessor emperors and migrant emperors but a female emperor seems the most likely fit. Again any input welcome as I don’t see enough emperors in Scotland to know them well.

There is a disappointing lack of reliable Tenerife wildlife websites that cover the birds, butterflies and odonata we come across here. It would be great to have more information and directions to good areas for wildlife, and describing the full list of resident species. Quite a few, like the blue chaffinches, still remain unseen.

clouded yellow

always a challenge to get an open wing shot

Berthelot’s pipit

a regular at the track and as friendly as robins

red darter (male)

I chased this one quite some distance as it was SO bright red.

I also had to kneel on quite a lot of gravelly rough ground.

For a while I was looking out for local hardware shops in which to buy carpet-fitters kneepads. I never wore long trousers and was always crawling around on unforgiving rough ground. By the time I found a hardware shop I had devised a kneepad made from wadded kitchen-roll to place between knee and gravel.

The above is a geranium bronze. Often found on geraniums. Last year we saw a total of none. They are very small so we may have overlooked them, but that made every one (and there were only a couple) I saw this trip, more special.

lots of painted ladies this year, though many were worn and faded

This was an exciting find - the only Southern Brown Argus I have seen in Tenerife in all the years coming here. It was on fairly nondescript roadside scrubland. It was between two areas where we found quite a lot of butterflies and yet it wasn’t somewhere you’d go past thinking that looks like a butterfly hotspot. Probably down to the small flowers, some of which were flowering. All three areas we could have walked past without investigation but they were near an impressive flowering hedge so I walked across the gravel and ‘weeds’ and noticed there was quite a bit of butterfly action that maybe warranted a closer look.

Despite returning several times to this area I saw no further examples of brown arguses. You can be sure I looked hard and long. One time I was there with Mary and she spotted a clouded yellow from about 80m away. The place is inundated with small whites so distinguishing a yellow from such a distance was mighty impressive. Since that first sighting we returned regularly to find and photo the yellows nectaring on the small white-and-yellow flowers and nearly indifferent to our company. Or as non-flighty as clouded yellers get. Many photos subsequently taken (a lot in pre-burst mode anticipating take-offs) and will be posted in subsequent blogs. It became our go-to butterfly spot even though it was a mile and a half from the hotel (and all uphill) and looked like no more than a desolate bus stop and a concrete dog-walkers path next to waste ground. Great for kestrel-

spotting too!

many small hoppers about

long-tailed blue or similar

loads of painted ladies in this same area

turd pockets?

Dodge

don’t know how butterflies can fly upside down but they can

Canarian speckled wood

many more this year than last

I went along to the Jardin Botanico on my own while Mary was working. (She had to do some online counselling as 3 weeks was too long to abandon her clients.) It is a relaxing place full of well established trees and shrubs, and spectacular in a fairly sedate way. The high canopy cover does not leave much room or sunlight for butterflies and so it is not a regular on our list of places to visit. I popped in because I was in the area and it was towards the end of the afternoon. I wanted to see if there were dragonflies around the pond at the back. There were! A very red scarlet darter (mostly outwith long-lens range) and an emperor female laying eggs in the reeds and leaves almost out of range.

briefly this flew over to right beside me (hurray!)

before returning to the other side of the pond

emperor female in front of exuvia of similar

laying eggs: I waited a long time (10mins) for her to move on,

but she didn’t move from this position

Also near the pond was this Canarian red admiral high on a tree. It was one of only 2 we saw all holiday. A few years ago they were on many of the flowering shrubs and hedges in town and up the woodland walks. Now they seem to be a very rare sight. I have no idea why the dramatic change in numbers.

emperor still not budging!

nice bit of low and high relief sculpture

many exotic plant species

an avocado-size fruit - maybe an avocado?

our hotel on the left

I would generally carry the large camera (in harness) for wildlife shots
and the DJI pocket (in a pocket!) for scenery and establishing shots

I took my Cotton camera harness. It was a bit of a pain to wear as it made a sweaty patch on whatever t-shirt I was wearing. I got it a while back as I suspected that carrying the new camera and long lens in my left arm had made me unbalanced and contributed to the sciatica that had dogged the first half of my year. Although I no longer have that problem, the harness carries the weight of the camera on my shoulders more evenly on day-long hikes. (I suspect a return to regular running and run training was the greatest part of sorting the sciatica issue, although it may just have faded away in the same way it slowly arrived. Perhaps just being a symptom of being older?)

we were on the fifth floor and if not carrying 8lt water bottles

would climb or descend the 81 stairs

Water: we boiled potatoes in tapwater and Mary would fill the kettle from the tap, but mostly I drank bottled water. I think we went through about eight litres a week. (About 1.25 euros at the supermarket.) In Edinburgh I drink a lot of Robinson’s squash. It doesn’t seem to be widely available here but you can get fresh mango juice (and orange, pineapple, apple and all sorts) so cheaply that it became the norm. One of the many things I’ll miss.

another geranium bronze

Spain is a catholic country but the amount of religious intrusion in Tenerife is minimal. M and I quite enjoy a humorous nativity scene or highly decorative BVM tile and are always on the look out for entertaining icons. The church along the front of P de la C is actually quite small and packed out with warm wood colours and a welcoming ambience. The life-size full scale nativity scene with dozens of mannequins in La Orotava which takes up an area larger than a tennis court is also quite a sight. Although someone had removed the baby jesus from Mary’s arms.

I think these were for sale and seemed to include Michael Jackson
and maybe Taylor Swift as well as the more traditional saints

pigeon the redeemer

parakeet

I love the ring-necked green parakeets that perch up the palm trees. Or fly like green cruise missiles between the buildings. Unfortunately I didn't get any (decent) photos of them this year, they seemed to stay out of range. Moderate numbers about - they can get a bit noisy and almost like pests in towns if too many congregate in the trees. Very loud squalking calls.

monarch showing underwing

the other skink - note floppy legs

franjipani: these beautiful flowering shrubs were all over the place

more lunchbeers!

west side of town

showing Teide behind
- maybe 10 miles away and 12,000feet high

Mary got better photos of these crabs -
I had my short lens on and they were some distance below

good light makes plain subjects shine

We were down near the seafront area. There is a small grove of blossoming shrubs we walk through to get to the prom which attracts butterflies, and a grassy area nearby more like rough ground that the dragonflies fly over. I think this one had caught a fly and stopped on a cactus to eat it. It was more interested in its meal than Mary and I approaching stealthily to get these close ups. After looking at a number of emperor and related images I think it must be a female emperor. Or a related species I haven't been able to track down. I was pleased with the quality of the images, light and specimen. Having already come across resting males (blue and black below the thorax) it was an exciting change to get cose to this one. I should edit and post the video I shot at the same time.